25 Hours in Frog Hollow

This is the last of my Turkey Day blog posts. I wanted to tell the story of my first 25-hour race. Who knows, maybe my only 25-hour race. I rode in the 25 Hours in Frog Hollow on a 4-person co-ed team, aptly named "Desert Tortoise," with Heather, Chris, and a friend of theirs, Jen. It was a lot of fun, in a kind of weird way. The logistics of such a race are interesting.

The race takes place out in the desert near Hurricane, UT, which is pretty far down in the southeast corner of the state. It just happened that I had been at the SETAC annual meeting in Salt Lake City the week before, so the timing was just right for driving down for the race after the meeting. We all got to Frog Hollow Friday afternoon. The race start/finish/camping area has a few little roads all coming together and works reasonably well for moving in a bunch of tents and campers. It was a little crowded, and the camping area was rough. The picture below was taken early in the day; later it became much more crowded.

Usually, the 25 Hours in Frog Hollow runs over the weekend of the time change, so it is a one-day, 25-hour race. This year the race was moved because Halloween occurred on the weekend of the time change; this time the race started at 10 a.m. on Saturday, 7 November, and ended at 11 a.m. on Sunday, 8 November.

Here's how it works: The race course is a 13-mile loop through the desert. If you're a solo rider, you pretty much have 25 hours to do as many laps around the course as you can in 25 hours. If you're on a team, you ride it as a relay, riders take turns doing laps, with the objective of getting in more laps than other teams in your class. Well, maybe the object is just to survive the ordeal, but it's even better if you survive and win. The picture below show, although not very well, the exchange area. Finishing riders enter the two large connected tents from the left (the opening is not visible). Inside are all the people recording stuff, and then starting riders come out the door on the right. The orange-ish tent is where you can get drinks and energy gels, and during the night, midnight pie.

The course was really a fun ride. It followed gravel roads and single track in a mostly steady, gentle climb, punctuated with three or four short steep climbs, for the first five miles. There was nothing technically challenging about the climb. Then, after a some steep short drops into a canyon, it caught the Jem Trail, a very fast and fun singletrack trail descending for several miles. Also not difficult; just fun. The hard part hit around mile 11, when the trail became increasingly technical with lots of rock slabs and ledges, and ups and downs, causing a lot of riders to pinch flat trying to go too fast on their first lap. Riding those last couple of miles was fun, but it was tough to keep pushing for speed while riding tired on that terrain.
  
I logged each of my laps separately on my Garmin. Here they are; click on the links to see the log:
Lap 1. The first lap started with 1/4-mile run, La Mans start at 10 a.m. Nothing beats running in bike shoes. This was the only lap where I was riding with a bunch of other riders at about the same pace most of the time. This lap felt like a race, and it caused me to push a little too hard on the climb, but that was offset by being held by by crowding on the Jem trail. This was my fastest lap, but it also wasn't slowed by the transition time.
Lap 2. My second lap started at about 3 p.m. I tried to take it just a little easier on the climb, topping out a few minutes slower than the first lap. The Jem trail was wide open, so I made up some time on the downhill, finishing less than a minute slower than my first lap. I experienced some cramping in my right quadriceps toward the end of this lap.
Lap 3. The first lap in the dark, starting around 8:40 p.m. My lights worked well -- one light on my helmet and one on my handlebars. It was pleasant to ride the course in the dark; less windy than my second lap. But I was slightly over-dressed and got rather damp. No leg cramps on this one, but my left thumb was having trouble pushing my shifter lever and dropper post lever. Not sure what that was about, but it made shifting awkward. After this lap, I was very hungry, so purchased a couple sandwiches, hot chocolate, and a cup of soup from the Lyons Club food truck. That was nice.
Lap 4. Our team's fourth, Jen, decided to sit out a lap after having some cramping during and after the previous lap. So I rode my fourth right after Heather's third lap. There is not a requirement that riders go in order, or even ride the same number of laps. I started at about 1 a.m. My decision was to do this and then get some sleep before a morning lap. Midway through, I had a problem on this lap. See the big dead spot in the middle of the Garmin log? Coming down a steep drop I caught a rock with my rear tire, dented my rim and pinched my tire, putting a hole in the sidewall. Running tubeless tires with liquid sealant (Stan's) helps prevent flats, but doesn't prevent them all. The Garmin doesn't lie: I lost 13 minutes fixing that flat. I was carrying a tube, so was able to put that into my tire and keep going, but after that, knowing I had no more spare tubes I took the rough stuff a little more gently.
Lap 5. I slept from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m., and then checked in with the team. Heather was out, and expected to finish at 7:30. That would put me on the course at 9 a.m. so I rested a little longer, then ate some breakfast and had huge mug of coffee. I was on the course again about 9:09 a.m., and finished in time for Chris to get in one more lap. After 65 miles, I was pretty tired.

Here's Chris, finishing a lap. His second, I think.

And Heather starting her second lap...

... and just after finishing the second.

Our team got in 17 laps. Chris and I each rode five and Heather rode four; Jen got the rest. There were three co-ed teams and we took third. One team rode 20, the fastest got in 26 laps!